Cuckoo 4K 2024 Ultra HD 2160p

In the bathroom of a mountain resort, 17-year-old Gretchen (Hunter Schafer) leaves a message on her deceased mother's answering machine, saying how much she misses her and how unhappy she is about moving from the US to Germany. Her parents are divorced, and her father Louis (Marton Csokas) has a new wife, Beth (Jessica Henwick), and an eight-year-old mute daughter, Alma (Mila Lye). For them, Gretchen is almost a stranger, dead weight on the truck of happiness. Their luxurious villa is located near a hotel, whose owner, Mr. König (Dan Stevens), has invited Louis to design a new business, another nest for tourists from all over the world. Gretchen has nothing much to do in the wilderness, so she takes a job at König's front desk and serves guests who are sometimes very strange. The girl begins to notice something amiss when she and her sister hear a strange cry from the forest that puts them both into a trance.

User Review

The second horror film from Neon Studios this summer, following Soul Collector. And, like the previous one, it scares with an atypical antagonist who is gradually revealed to the viewer. That is, we don't understand what's going on around us until almost the end, just like the main character, and simply rely on the narrative.

The film has its flaws: there is no well-defined evil, we don't know where it comes from or when it first encountered a person who interacts with it in their own way. This prevents the necessary engagement from developing. There is a lot of ambiguity regarding the main family; we don't get to know anyone except the protagonist Hunter Schaffer properly, and all the characters feel like props to keep the focus on the psychological state of one character. Overall, most of the negatives stem from the script, because in other respects, namely visually, it is a real treat.

The Kubrick-style filming collided with Lynch and shot The Shining in the mountains of Twin Peaks. The image of the monster itself — a creature in a cloak and glasses — is very memorable, though not particularly scary, and Hunter Schaffer appears on screen for half of the film with bruises, in a cast, or with a butterfly knife, which also sticks in the memory and looks like part of a unified aesthetic, contrasting particularly interestingly with the soothing pastel backgrounds of the forest in daylight or the hotel surroundings.

What I always find lacking in such horror films is logic, as I think most people do. “Highbrow horror” films can send shivers down your spine with their atmosphere or entertain you with original screamers (in this case, time loops that you cannot escape of your own accord), but their scripts always fall short. There is a review article by Ksenia Reutova on KinoPoisk that explains why this film turned out the way it did. Director Tilman Singer comes from an atypical film school; he thinks like an artist rather than a storyteller, which means that for him, the most important thing is the images that should impress the viewer, and only then the plot and script.

Moreover, the German school of horror is empty of teachers and modern examples, and therefore such an unusual (or even insufficiently coherent) horror film from this country is more a product of circumstances than an attempt to go beyond any genre boundaries, which do not exist in Germany as such. Tilman is more inspired by the general European school of horror of the end of the last century, such as late giallo, and turns it into his own project, which has a place to be.

As a body horror film, it gets a weak C; as a psychological thriller, it gets a 5 out of 10; visually, it gets at least an 8. Overall, I am unlikely to want to immerse myself in the local realities again and watch someone else's storylines, because once all the cards are on the table, there is no need to revisit the main story, and this is a serious oversight on the part of the author in terms of the main thing that makes you want to rewatch most films — an engaging script.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (70.0 Mb/s)
Resolution: 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Aspect ratio: 2.39:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Info Audio

#English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: FLAC 2.0

Info Subtitles